Prayer of Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise 
that is the Lord’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings protection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No programme accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of
goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation is realising that.

This enables us to do something and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,

An opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the results,

But that is the difference between the Master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not Master builders; ministers, not Messiahs.

We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

(The prayer is undated; 
The late Bishop Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, 
assasinated by the military junta on March 24, 1980)